Latino Legacy

Gr 7 Up—Through archival footage, photographs, interviews with veterans, and narration, this film superficially addresses the experience of Latinos in World War II. There is great potential in the high-quality, compelling black-and-white film snippets, but the narration is confusing. At the start, the narrator asserts that many soldiers in World War II lost their innocence in the trauma of war. The rest of the film contradicts this argument. Interviews with Latino veterans demonstrate that experiencing discrimination and poverty at home did not make the war any less painful. The film focuses on the similarities between white and Latino soldiers. The interviews feel choppy and incomplete. The narrator sounds like a sportscaster with an inappropriately bubbly, cheerful inflection (even when describing war horrors), and the upbeat music is similarly disconcerting. Speeches about the unacknowledged sacrifice of Latino soldiers would have been more meaningful if they had been accompanied by concrete examples of the ways in which Latinos were mistreated or under-represented. There is no doubt that discrimination occurred, but the film is too vague to offer a true historical portrait of the experience. If an interviewer had only probed deeper when talking to veterans—asking more questions about race and culture—the interviews could have been revelatory. Instead of providing a window into an experience, this film only provides a frustratingly incomplete glimpse.—Jess deCourcy Hinds, Bard High School Early College Queens, Long Island City, NY